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"Dust and Ashes": The Funeral and Forgetting of

Arthur Kiron University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Kiron, A. (1996). "Dust and Ashes": The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/library_papers/69

Suggested Citation: Kiron, Arthur. (1996). "Dust and Ashes": The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais. American . Vol. 84(3). p. 155-188.

This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/library_papers/69 For more information, please contact [email protected]. "Dust and Ashes": The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais

Keywords , Biography, Death and Burial

Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Jewish Studies

Comments Suggested Citation: Kiron, Arthur. (1996). "Dust and Ashes": The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais. American Jewish History. Vol. 84(3). p. 155-188.

This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/library_papers/69 "Dust and Ashes": The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais·

ARTHUR KIRON

Who were those hundreds and thousands that crowded Fifth Street this afternoon for entire squares from side to side, leaving just room enough for the cars to pass? Who were those hundreds whose weary feet traveled the distance from Fifth and Green to Twelfth and Federal streets? A guard of honor it was which kings might envy. Who were they?]

Sabato Morais remains something of a riddle to students of nineteenth­ century American Jewish history, just as the phenomenon of his thou­ sands of mourners baffled observers at his funeral in November I897.2

.. This essay was originally submitted for a Colloquium on American Jewish History conducted by Professor Arthur Aryeh Goren at Columbia University, Spring, 1995. Special thanks to Arthur Aryeh Goren, and to Maria Baader, Arnold M. Eisen, J. Karp and Jonathan Karp for their close readings of earlier drafts. Many thanks to Congregation and the National Museum of American Jewish History, , PA for their kindness and help during an earlier stage of this project's research. I am especially grateful to the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, particularly M. Goldenberg, Associate Director of the Center and Aviva Astrinsky, Director of the Library at the Center, for giving me the opportunity to work with the Sabato Morais Papers. The following abbreviations have been used: AH, The American Hebrew; AJA, American Jewish Archives; AJH, American Jewish History; qs, Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; DAB, Dictionary of American Biography; DHL, Doctor of Hebrew Literature; EJ, Encyclopedia Judaica; HUC, Hebrew Union College; IHL, Sabato Morais, Italian Hebrew Literature; JE, Jewish Encyclopedia; JQR, Jewish Quar­ terly Review; JTSA, Jewish Theological Seminary of America; LBIYB, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook; M I, Mikveh Israel; OCC, The Occident and American Jewish Advocate; PAAJR, Publications of the American Academy of Jewish Research; PAJHS, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society; PJAC, Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center; PJE, Philadelphia Jewish Exponent; SM, Sabato Morais; UJE, Universal Jewish Encyclope­ dia; YU, University. 1. , PJE, November 19, 1897, 6. Edwin Wolf 2nd estimates the Philadelphia Jewish community grew from approximately 15,000 in 1880 to 70,000 in 1904. See Edwin Wolf 2nd, "By the People and for the People," typescript history of the Federation of Jewish Charities, PJAC, 21, cited in Robert Tabak, "Orthodox in Transition," in Jewish Life in Philadelphia: 1830-1940, ed. Murray Friedman (Philadel­ phia, 1983),48 and 318, n. 1. Cf. the figures listed in Rader Marcus, To Count a People: American Jewish Population Data, 1585-1984 (Lanham, 1990), 194: 40,000 in 189°,75,000 in 1900. 2. Morais' dates of birth andlor death have sometimes been misstated. He was born on Sunday, April 13, 1823 (2 Iyar 5583) in and died on Thursday, November II, 156 A MER I CAN JEW ISH HIS TOR Y A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 157

We know the rough outlines of Morais' life,3 just as his contemporaries, of course, knew the identity of the immigrant Eastern European Jewish amerike . .. on sofek" {"without doubt ... the greatest of all orthodox masses who lost a day's pay to attend his burial that rainy Monday in the "),s has become almost invisible in standard afternoon in Philadelphia.4 But the Italian-born Morais, who two years accounts of the American Jewish past. As the centenary of his death after his death was memorialized by Kasriel Sarasohn's Orthodox New approaches, this neglect is all the more surprising, given the statement by York Yudishe Gazeten as "der grester fun ale ortodoksishe rabonim in , one of American jewry's most visible public figures in the early twentieth century, that "to the Jews of England, France, , and the Orient, [Morais] was the representative American Jew."6 The New 1897 (16 Marheshvan 5898). According to the morning edition of the (Philadelphia) Public York Times remembered Morais as "the most eminent in this Ledger, Friday, November 12, 1897, the PJE, November 19, 1897, and the account of his country . . . a powerful and aggressive factor in discussions of vast son Henry S. Morais, a founder and editor of the PJE, who apparently was present at the import and interest to millions of people; a deep, incisive, fearless time of his death, Morais suffered a stroke Wednesday evening, November 10, lapsed into a coma for approximately twenty-two hours, awoke briefly and finally died of a massive thinker, speaker, and writer."7 Moshe Davis declared in 1947, fifty years brain seizure shortly before 6:00 p.m., Thursday, November II, 1897. His funeral service after Morais' death, that "a volume on Sabato Morais, his life and times, occurred the following Monday, November 15, at 2:00 p.m. is a desideratum in American Jewish history."8 Despite this high 3. See the biographical information and memorial tributes specially prepared after estimation of Morais by his contemporaries and by Davis, the call for Morais' death for the PJE and AH, November 19, 1897. For guides to the primary and secondary sources, see Dianne Ashton, The Philadelphia Group: A Guide to Archival and such a publication went unanswered. In a recent survey of scholarly Bibliographic Collections (Philadelphia, 1993); Moshe Davis, "Sabato Morais: Selected and Annotated Bibliography of his Writings," PAJHS 37 (1947): 55-93; Arthur Kiron, "Sabato Morais Papers Finding Aid" (CjS, 1992). Since Morais' death, a handful of 56; Judah David Eisenstein, Otsar Zikhronotai, Part I (, 1929), 20; Alex J. reminiscences, brief biographical sketches, articles and two unpublished theses have Goldman, The Greatest Rabbis Hall of Fame: A Who's Who of Distinguished American appeared. In particular, see Henry Samuel Morais, Sabato Morais: A Memoir (New York, Rabbis (New York, 1987),99-114; Henry S. Morais, The Jews of Philadelphia (Philadel­ 189 8) [reprinted from the Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Convention of the Jewish phia, 1894), 59-63; Pamela Susan Nadell, in America: A Biographi­ Theological Seminary Association (New York, 1898)]. For a collection of reminiscences cal Dictionary and Sourcebook (New York, 1988), 190-93; Abraham A. Neuman, read on the occasion of the centenary of Morais' birth (1823-1923), see William Rosenau, "Morais, Sabato," UJE 7 (1942): 638-40; Jack Riemer, "Morais, Sabato," EJ 12 (1971): "Sabato Morais-An Appreciation of the Centenary of His Birth"; Marvin Nathan, 294-95; Solis-Cohen, "Necrology," PAJHS 8 (1900): 149-50; Cyrus L. Sulzberger, "Discussion," in Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook 33 (1923): 35 6-74; "Morais, Sabato," JE 8 (1904): 679-81. Commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the birth of The Reverend Doctor 4. For a colorful description of immigrant Jewish life in Philadelphia around this time, Sabato Morais by the Congregation Mikveh Israel, Wednesday Evening, April 18, 192 3 see "Jewish Immigrant Life in Philadelphia, From The Sunday Mercury, August 10, 1890," (Philadelphia, 1924). Other reminiscences include Cyrus Adler, "Semi-Centennial Ad­ reprinted in AJA 9 (April 1957): 32-42. For background on the Philadelphia Jewish dress," and Joseph H. Hertz, "Sabato Morais-A Pupil's Tribute," in The Jewish community during the second half of the nineteenth century, see Morais, Jews of Theological Seminary Semi-Centennial Volume, ed. Cyrus Adler (New York, 1939), 5-6; Philadelphia; Murray Friedman, ed ., Jewish Life in Philadelphia, 1830-1940 (Philadel­ 46-48. For the two theses, see Max Samuel Nussenbaum, "Sabato Morais: Champion of phia, 1983); Maxwell Whiteman, "Philadelphia's Jewish Neighborhoods," in The Peoples Orthodoxy" (D. H. L., Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University, 1964) and of Philadelpha: A History of Ethnic Groups and Lower-Class Life, 1790-1940, eds. Allen Ruth Alpers, "Traditionalism, Americanization, and Assimilation: The Struggles of Sabato F. Davis and Mark H. Heller (Philadelphia, 1973), 231-54, and additional Morais, 1851-1897" (rabbinic thesis, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, sources, 251, n. 10. 1994). For articles about Morais, see Alan D. Corre, "Sabato Morais and Social Justice in 5. Yudishe Gazeten ("The Jewish Gazette"), Pesah blat (" Issue"), March 24, Philadelphia, 1858-1897," in The Quest for Social Justice: The Morris Fromkin Memorial 1899, 12. I am grateful to Rabbi Abraham J. Karp for bringing this rare source to my Lectures, ed. Alan D. Corre (Milwaukee, 1992), 19-35; Moshe Davis, "Shabbtai Morais: attention. A copy of this issue can be found in the Abraham and Deborah Karp Collection toldotav, de'otav u-fe'ulotav," in Sefer ha-shanah li-yehude amerikah, ed. M. Ribalow of Judaica Americana at the Library of the JTSA. ("Sabato Morais: his life, thought, and activities," in The American Hebrew Yearbook) 7 6. Cyrus Adler, PJE, November 19, 1897, 3. Indeed, Morais' extant, voluminous (New York, 1944), 574-92; Robert E. Fierstien, "Sabato Morais and the Founding of the correspondence, held at CJS (formerly the Annenberg Research Institute, and before that Jewish Theological Seminary," in When Philadelphia Was the Capital of Jewish America, the Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning) amply bears out Adler's assertion, ed. Murray Friedman (Cranston, N.]., 1993),75-91; idem., A Different Spirit: The Jewish featuring letters received from around the world, including Holland, Canada, the Theological Seminary of America, 1886-1902 (New York, 1990), passim (revised from Caribbean, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, , Poland, Rumania, and the author's DHL thesis at the JTSA about the founding of the JTSA). Other brief from as far away as India. biographical sketches include Cyrus Adler, "Morais, Sabato," DAB 7 (New York, 1934), 7. The New York Times, Saturday, November 13, 1897, 7; also quoted in AH, 149-50; Moshe Davis, The Emergence of Conservative Judaism (Philadelphia, 1963), 354- November 19, 1897, 68. 8. Davis, "Annotated Bibliography," 57. A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 159 158 AM E RIC A N JEW ISH HIS TOR Y

Sabato, after whom he was named, were Freemasons and immersed in OpInIOnS about the "Greatest American Jewish leaders" in American rebellion spurred by the Napoleonic invasion in June 1796. "It was Jewish History, Morais did not merit a single mention.9 [Sabato, the paternal grandfather] who instilled a feeling for liberty into Why has the memory of this once renowned figure suffered so deeply his compatriots. It was he who exclaimed 'Up for liberty; down with the passage of time? To put the question more broadly, what is the tyrants ... [and] in his son Samuel Morais was found a devoted process by which a particular figure or event comes to occupy a central Republican, a man who even suffered imprisonment for his political or peripheral place in the history and memory of a particular ethnic opinions, who was wont to exclaim 'Even the boards of my bed are group? Is it useful to speak of an American Jewish ethnic memory? If so, Republican.''' Imbued from childhood with a tradition of political how is contemporary ethnic remembering entwined with the activity of engagement, and through his own involvement as a Freemason in the history writing, and what role, if any, does gender play in the politics of Risorgimento (the movement for Italian national unification), Morais forgetting? The following discussion will reopen the issue of Morais' became devoted to the republican ideals of Giuseppe Mazzini, Italy's legacy-the world from which he came, his life and times, his unprec­ "Prophet in Exile." Mazzini found safe haven in London after 1837, edented funeral and subsequent scholarly neglect-as part of a prelimi­ along with other exiled Italian nationalist leaders, including a number of nary effort to map a process of forgetting in the broader context of a Jews from Livorno. 12 particular transitional moment in the history of American Jewry. 10 Morais arrived in London in 1845 from Livorno at the age of twenty­ Sabato Morais was born on April 13, 1823 in Livorno (or Leghorn, as two. Spurred by economic hardship, he came to London as a poor young English sailors called it), just south of Pisa on the western coast of the scholar, teaching ordination in hand, seeking his first appointment as northern Italian duchy of Tuscany. Sabato was the third of nine children, assistant to the leader of religious services at the city's most prestigious with one younger brother and seven sisters. He was raised "in quite congregation, the Sephardic Sha'ar Shamayim at Bevis Marks. He failed humble circumstances" and educated in Livorno. 11 Morais' father to win the post, principally due to his unpolished English, but so Samuel descended from Portuguese Marranos who arrived in London in favorably impressed those who interviewed him that within a year he the 16 50S, perhaps from colonial Brazil, and settled in Livorno around would return to take the position of Master of the congregation's 1730. Sabato's mother Buonina Wolf was of German-Ashkenazic origin Orphan school. Morais lived in London from 1846 until 1851 and came and it was she who decisively influenced her young son to pursue his to know many prominent Jewish families through his congregational religious vocation. Both Morais' father and his paternal grandfather work and as the Hebrew and Italian tutor of their children. The Jewish philanthropist Sir Montefiore was a native of Livorno who befriended Morais. In London Morais met Mazzini and later corre­ 9. See the forum on the "Greatest American Jewish Leaders" in AJH 78 (December sponded with him. Morais reportedly turned over his passport to 1988): 169-236. Morais is actually mentioned twice in respondent Benny Kraut's article (216 and 233) but only in passing, and not as a subject or "candidate" for consideration. Otherwise, Morais does not receive a single mention. One interesting exception to this 12. The significance of Morais' formative years in Livorno and in London requires general neglect is the hagiographic treatment by Rabbi Alex J. Goldman, The Greatest separate treatment. For general background on the Jews of Livorno, see SM, "The History Rabbis, 99-II4. It is telling, perhaps, that Morais' name does not appear among the list of of the Jewish Congregation of Livorno," in Menorah Monthly II, 6 (December 1891): leading names on the cover of Goldman's book calculated to draw the attention of 353-6I; Flora Aghuib Levi d'Ancona, "The Sephardi Community of Leghorn (Livorno)," prospective buyers. Sephardic Heritage, eds. R. D. Barnett and W. M. Schwab (Grendon, I989), 2:I80-202. 10. On the exploding literature on ethnicity, see, e.g., Werner Sollors, ed., The For a guide to the archival sources of the Jews of Livorno, see Poalo Castignoli, "Fonti Per Invention of Ethnicity (New York, 1989) and additional bibliography cited there. For the La storia Ebrei A Livorno. Gli Archivi Locali," in Italia Judaica (Rome, I989): I83-90 classic study which has defined the terms of the debate about Jewish historiography, (English Summary, "Sources for the History of the Jews in Leghorn-the Local Archives," collective memory and modern dilemmas, see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish 2I7-I8). For an overview of the Morais family and his life before coming to the United History and Jewish Memory (New York, 1989). For an important methodological guide to States, see Nussenbaum, 5-I9. On Morais' mother's influence, see Morais, Memoir, 8; for the subject of gender and women's history, see Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics the quotes about Morais' father and grandfather, see Morais, Memoir, 7. For Morais' of History (New York, 1988), esp. ch. 2, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical certificate of membership (in Italian) in the Freemasons, see SM Papers, Box I7, FF 40 Analysis," 28-50, and more generally Sheila Rowbotham, Hidden From History: Redis­ (ClS). On Mazzini, see William Roberts, Prophet in Exile: Joseph Mazzini in England, covering Women in History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (New York, 1837-1868 (New York, I989) and Dennis Mack Smith, Mazzini (New Haven and 1975)· London, I994). II. Morais, Jews of Philadelphia, 60. 160 AM E RIC A N JEW ISH HIS TOR Y A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 161

Mazzini before leaving London for America, enabling the exiled leader, who faced an outstanding arrest warrant from the Austrian imperial Morais transplanted to America a distinctive Anglo-Livornese "rab­ authorities, to travel surreptitiously to the continent and back to Italy.13 binic humanist" outlook whose formative elements await further study. 15 In 18 SI, with the encouragement of friends and admirers, Morais The sources of Morais' worldview and literary interests are extraordinar­ reluctantly left London for the United States to apply for the office of ily diverse, and his political views are steeped in the teachings of Mazzini hazan, or reader, at Philadelphia's Congregation Mikveh Israel. Mikveh and in his admiration for Abraham Lincoln, for him another republican Israel was the oldest and wealthiest in Philadelphia and a in the Mazzinian mold. 16 Morais was a sensitive student of medieval Sephardic sister congregation of Bevis Marks in London. Like Morais' (particularly that of )17 and Hebrew native Livorno, Philadelphia was a bustling port city, a hub of nine­ poetry,18 the entire range of the Italian Jewish literary tradition,19 the teenth-century culture, commerce and publishing with a revolutionary historical studies and Hebrew writings of the nineteenth-century Galician political tradition of its own. Morais arrived in New York harbor aboard the steamer Asia on Friday, March 14, 18 SI. After spending his first weekend in America in New York, Morais travelled south to Philadel­ Morais' arrival in America, see The Asmonean, 3, 23 (March 28, 1851): 181 and Morais, phia, where he delivered a sermon on the following Sabbath to his Jews of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1894), 59. For Morais' naturalization on May 17, prospective congregation. Within a month, on April 13, 18 SI (his 18 H, see Declaration Documents, Supreme Court, East District Pennsylvania, V.9A, cited twenty-eighth birthday by the Christian calendar) Morais was elected in Nussenbaum, 12, n. 3 I. For information about Morais meeting his wife, see "Rosa Mordecai's Recollection's of the First Hebrew Sunday School," PAJHS 42 (1952-53): 403; minister. Morais became a naturalized American citizen on May 17, for the year of marriage, see the PJE, November 19, 1897, 3. For the date of Morais' 1854. The following spring he married Clara Esther Weil, a teacher he lifetime appointment as minister at Mikveh Israel, see Morais, Jews of Philadelphia, 60. met at the Hebrew Sunday School, and on September 13, 1868 the 15· This locution, of course, needs to be more clearly explained and expanded upon. In synagogue by election granted him a life-time appointment.14 short, I have in mind Morais' Livornese Jewish blend of religious humanism in contrast to primarily Franco-German Enlightenment currents. For this contrast and an argument for a Livornese Jewish tradition of religious humanism influenced by Giambattista Vico, see Jose Faur, "Sephardim in the Nineteenth Century: New Directions and Old Values," PAAJR 44 13. On his years in London see Davis, "Shabbtai Morais," 576; Morais, Memoir, 12- (1977): 29-52 and idem., "Vico, Religious Humanism and the Sephardic Tradition," 13; Nussenbaum, 8-10; on the London Sephardic Jewish community, see Albert M. Judaism 27 (Winter 1978): 61-71, and esp. 67, n. 12. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England (London, 1951). For Morais' relationship with 16. On Morais' admiration for Mazzini and Abraham Lincoln, see Morais, Memoir, Montefiore, see SM Papers, Box I, FF 21; Box II, FF 4 (ClS). On Jewish home education 23: "For [Sabato Morais] these two men stood for the highest aims; they represented the in England before 1870, see Todd Endelman, Radical Assimilation in English Jewish noblest achievements of the century." See also, SM, An Address on the Death of Abraham History, 1656-1945 (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1990), 77-88. For Morais' account Lincoln . .. On Wednesday, April 19,1865 (Philadelphia, 1865) and A Discourse . .. On of his meeting Mazzini, see SM, "'A Patriot': A Lecture delivered before the Youngmen's Thursday, June 1, 1865, The Day Appointed for Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer, for the Hebrew Association of Phila.," ms., SM Papers, Box 12, FF II (ClS) . For the story of Untimely Death of the Late Lamented President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln Mazzini and Morais' passport, see Morais, Memoir, 24; Cecil Roth accepts this account as (Philadelphia, 1865). factual in History of the Jews of Italy (Philadelphia, 1946), 457. 17· Morais translated into English for the first time Maimonides' Ma'amar Tehiyat ha­ 14. On Philadelphia's revolutionary tradition, see "American Radicalism in the Local metim ("Treatise on Resurrection") and Igeret Teman ("Epistle to Yemen") dealing with Community: Philadelphia in the Eighteenth Century," in The Origins of Anglo-American the prob.lem of messianism and false messiahs and the fate and fidelity of the Jewish Radicalism, eds. Margaret C. Jacob and James R. Jacob (Atlantic Highlands, NJ and community. They appeared in serialized form in The Jewish Messenger, beginning London, 1984), 258-302. For general background on Philadelphia and its distinctive ~eptember 15, 18H, and The Jewish Messenger, September 15, 1876, respectively. On the history, see E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: Two Protestant Image of Maimonides in the early haskalah and in the nineteenth century, see James H. Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership (Boston, 1982); Sam Bass Warner, Leh~an, "Maimonides, Mendelssohn, and the Me'asfim," LBIYB 20 (1975): 87-108; Jay Philadelphia: A Private City (Philadelphia, 1971); Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, Hams, "The Image of Maimonides in Nineteenth Century Jewish Historiography," Russel F. Weigley, et al. eds., (New York and London, 1982). On early Philadelphia Jewish PAAJR H (19 87): II7-39· Morais' view of Maimonides stands in strong contrast to that history, particularly as centered around Congregation Mikveh Israel, see Edwin Wolf 2nd of , who condemned Maimonides for what Luzzatto in general and Maxwell Whiteman, The History of the Jews of Philadelphia from Colonial Times to referred to as "Atticism." the Age of Jackson (Philadelphia, 1957). On Morais' predecessor at Mikveh Israel and the . 18. Morais translated from Hebrew into English Dunash Ben Labrat's poetic introduc­ controversy leading to his departure, see A Review of the Late Controversies Between Rev. tIOn t? ,a book ~edicated to Hasdai Ibn Shaprut. See Jewish Record, July 20, 1877, 3; for Leeser and the Congregation Mikveh Israel (Philadelphia, 18 50) and A Review of MoraIS translation as well as that of the poetry of Menahem Saruk, see IHL, 163-70. For "The Review" of the Late Controversy between the Rev. and the Philadelphia bac~ground see Eliyahu Ashtor, The Jews of Moslem Spain, trans. from Hebrew by Congregation, "Mickve Israel" by an Israelite (New York, 1850). For the account of Klein and Jenny Machlowitz Klein (Philadelphia, 1963), 1:228-63. 19· See SM, IHL, ed. Julius Greenstone (Philadelphia, 1924). 162 AM E RIC A N JEW ISH HIS TOR Y A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 163

maskil, Solomon Yehudah Rapoport,2° and the teachings of the re­ Morais served at Congregation Mikveh Israel over forty-six years, nowned Jewish biblical exegete from Trieste, Samuel David Luzzatto.21 from r851 until his death in November r897, the longest continuous For halakic rulings Morais turned to Haham Abraham Baruch Piperno, tenure, according to Pamela Nadell, "of any nineteenth-century Ameri­ 22 his teacher and in Livorno. He was tutored in Semitic can Jewish congregational leader. " 25 In the course of the next half languages and was exposed to the wider Italian and European literary century Morais became one of the most beloved of American Jewish heritage by Salvatorre De Benedetti of the University of Pisa. 23 Morais leaders and an outspoken intellectual force whose concerns and influence nurtured a deep love for music, particularly Italian opera, composed were national and international in scope. Despite his manifold activities, Hebrew poetry, and was perhaps the most outstanding Hebraist in which extended to almost every area of civic life, contemporary histori­ America in the nineteenth century. 24 ans tend to remember Morais for his role as founder and first president of the original Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA), estab­ 20. In 1867, Morais proposed inviting Rapoport to the United States from Prague to lished in in r886 and today the home of the modern serve as an halakic authority (Rapoport died later that year). See Davis, "Annotated Conservative movement.26 Bibliography," 64 (no. 23) regarding SM, "Hebrew Ritual," Jewish Messenger, 21, 5 For those attending his funeral in r897, however, Morais would have (February I, 1867): 4-5; 21, 9 (March 8, 1867): 4-5; 21, 15 (April 12, 1867): 4. On been remembered above all not as the founder of the JTSA but as the Solomon Yehudah Rapaport, see Isaac Barzilay, Solomon Yehudah Rapoport and His Contemporaries (Israel, 1969); H. S. Morais, Eminent of the Nineteenth Century humble minister of Philadelphia's most prestigious Jewish congrega­ (Philadelphia, 1880), 291-96. tionY If prodded, they also might have mentioned the many political 21. It is often assumed that Morais was a disciple of Samuel David Luzzatto. Discipleship can mean either literally the student of someone or, in a broad sense, an adherent of a given outlook. Morais, who carried on a life-long correspondence with a sample of Morais' poetry, see his "Ode to the " in Menorah Monthly, Luzzatto's son Isaiah, did not actually study with Luzzatto, though he read his writings, 3, 3 (September 1887): 177-78. which he remarked "are, of course, known to every Italian student" (SM to Bernhard 25. Nadell, 192. Felsenthal, Dec. 14, 1896, SM Papers, Box 7, FF 10 (CJS)). H. S. Morais reports that one 26. See Corre, 19. Morais' role in the founding of the JTSA, and the competing of his father' students said that "although a master of the Holy Scriptures, [Morais] denominational claims upon that institution and Morais as its founder, directly bears upon preferred to call himself a disciple of Luzzatto, and often had resort to that scholar in cases our question of history and memory but requires separate treatment. For the debate, see of doubt or disputes" (H. S. Morais, Memoir, 29). Nonetheless, the precise meaning of Moshe Davis, Emergence; Charles Liebman, "Orthodoxy in Nineteenth Century America," "discipleship" here refers to biblical exegesis and did not concern Morais' attitudes toward Tradition 6 (Spring-Summer 1964): 132-44; Abraham J. Karp, "The Origins of Conserva­ Luzzatto's views on the study of philosophy, literature, or history in general. For Morais' tive Judaism," Conservative Judaism 19 (Summer 1965): 33 - 48, and Nussenbaum, 107- relationship with and attitude toward Luzzatto, see SM, IHL, 78 ff. On Luzzatto, see Marc 29· For a review of the debate, see Jeffrey Gurock, "Resisters and Accomodaters: Varieties Gopin, "The Religious Ethics of Samuel David Luzzatto" (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, of Orthodox Rabbis in America, 1886-1983," in AJA 35 (November 1983): 162-63, n. 6. 1994) and additional bibliography provided there; Morris Margolies, Samuel David The debate has been renewed by Fierstien, "Sabato Morais and the Founding of the JTSA, " Luzzatto: Traditionalist Scholar (New York, 1979). For Luzzatto's negative attitude who affirms the centrality of Morais as an institutional founder, while characterizing the toward emancipation, see Salo W. Baron, "ShaDaL veha-mehapekhah ba-shanot ha-1848- early Seminary as essentially guided by the positive-historical outlook of Zecharias 49" ("Samuel David Luzzatto and the Revolution of 1848-49"), Simha Assaf Jubilee Fraenkel and the Breslau Juedisch Theologisches Seminary after which it was named. Volume, M. D. Cassuto and Joseph Klausner, eds. (, 1953),40-63. Fierstien, thus, implicitly circumscribes Morais' founding role to what amounts to a 22. An important instance in which Morais solicited a legal-ruling was during the Civil beloved figurehead, relying in part on Davis and Ismar Schorsch's study of Zecharias War when he asked Piperno for a decision about the permissibility of interment of Jews in Frankel in order to claim continuity between the early Seminary and later movement of non-Jewish public cemeteries. Morais translated Piperno's (negative) response and pub­ modern Conservative Judaism. See Ismar Schorsch, "Zacharias Frankel and the European lished it, beside the shared opinion of Nathan Adler (chief rabbi of Great Britain, which Origins of Conservative Judaism," Judaism 30 (1981): 344-54. Without entering here into was solicited by Isaac Leeser), in OCC 21 (1863): 181-86. See also, for the ongoing the details of the debate, the "Breslau argument," in short, conflates the early Seminary's polemic over this sensitive issue, acc 21 (1863): 266-72. For another example of Morais outlook with that of Frankel's positive-historical Judaism while projecting back on to the seeking a legal responsum from Piperno, see Nussenbaum, 77, n. 106, and 223· early Seminary aspects of the character of the "second" Seminary reorganized in 1902 by 23. He also corresponded with him. See SM Papers, Box 8, FF I (ClS). On Morais' Mayer Sulzberger and others and then headed by . Schechter's place in relation with De Benedetti, see Morais, Memoir, 8-9. According to H. S. Morais, De the ethnic memory of American Jewry, meanwhile, has been assured, if only by virtue of Benedetti published a sketch about his former pupil in the journal II Vessillo Israelitico the fact that the school system of the modern Conservative movement is named after him. (n.p., n.d.); see ibid., 7 (note). 27· While undoubtedly a significant achievement, it was among Morais' last contribu­ 24. Morais, Memoir, 14. Morais brought at least three boxes filled with scores of tions. Morais is said to have referred with affection to the JTSA as "his , the child Italian Jewish liturgical music with him to Philadelphia. See MI Archives, Philadelphia. For of his old age." See Rosenau, 35 6. A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 165 164 AM E RIC A N JEW ISH HIS TOR Y

when came under siege. 33 In the same year, amidst a bruising public causes he took up throughout his life, often at great personal risk. In debate in Pennsylvania about capital punishment, Morais had published 1858, for example, Morais had defiantly refused to recite the prayer for an historical sketch of rabbinic opposition to the practice and defended the nation in protest over President James Buchanan's indifferent Jews from being blamed for the death penalty because it appeared in the response to the abduction and baptism of an Italian Jewish child named laws of Moses. 34 They might have heard or read about his strong Edgardo Mortara, a scandal known as the Mortara Affair.28 Many criticism of the Chinese Exclusion Acts during the 1880s;35 his unprec­ would know that Morais had been enrolled as an honorary member of edented role mediating a volatile garment-workers strike in the summer the Union League in 1887, for his support of Abraham Lincoln during of 1890;36 his outcries against the persecution of Armenians in 1895;37 the Civil War. 29 Morais had faced personal threats and pressures yet his regular protests throughout the second half of the nineteenth century continued to use his pulpit to preach support for the Union and against the treatment of Jews in Morocco, Switzerland, Romania, the opposition to the institution of slavery, winning for the congregation the Balkans and .38 The non-Jewish clergy in attendance might have gratitude of President Lincoln himself.30 A few might have know of his mentioned Morais' ecumenical outlook and earnest respect for other support of Native American Indians, while many others would have faiths-even as they recalled how he zealously battled missionary known from direct experience of Morais' regular trips to visit the elderly, activity, prayer in the public schools, and pronouncements that the 3 the sick, the poor or the imprisoned. ) United States was a Christian nation, or Thanksgiving a Christian rather Morais would have been familiar from the local press to many of the than national holiday. 39 non-Jewish Philadelphians witnessing the funeral procession. In 1868, Most of those anonymous faces lining the route of the funeral for example, he had appealed publicly to the provisional government in procession or enduring the cold rain in the overflowing crowd gathered Spain to revoke the infamous Edict of Expulsion of 1492.32 In 1870 at the entrance to the cemetery would have been the unknowing direct Morais had called for a negotiated peace during the Franco-Prussian War beneficiaries of Morais' behind-the-scenes roles and fundraising efforts for the Hebrew Immigrant Society and the Jewish Alliance. Morais had quietly solicited financial support on their behalf from Baron Maurice De 28. See Bertram Korn, The American Reaction to the Mortara Affair (, Hirsch via the Baron's almoner, Morais' childhood friend Emmanuel 1957); for Morais' response, see Nussenbaum, 131-32; on the little-known "Second Veneziani. Through his connections, Morais was able to put on a more Mortara Affair," the abduction of another Italian child named Joseph Coen in 1864, and Morais' response, see Nussenbaum, 132-33. secure financial footing organizations which provided basic relief assis­ 29. See the Chronicle of the Union League of Philadelphia, 1862-1902 (Philadelphia, tance and vocational training and built agricultural and industrial 1902), 532; Maxwell Whiteman, Gentlemen in Crisis: The First Century of the Union schools for the new Jewish arrivals.40 League, 1862-1962 (Philadelphia, 1975), 316, n. 35; idem., "The Philadelphia Group," in Jewish Life in Philadelphia, 166; Davis, Emergence, II2, 418, n. 92. 30. During the Civil War Lincoln sent a letter to Mikveh Israel expressing gratitude for a copy of a prayer publicly delivered by Morais in support of Lincoln and the Union cause. 33 · Nussenbaum, 145; Philadelphia Inquirer, November 27, 1868,3. See Moshe Davis, "Mikhtav Linkoln li-kehilah yehudit," in ha-Doar, 24, 16 (February 18, 34· SM, "Capital Punishment," Jewish Messenger 27, 9 (March 4, 1870): 2. The first 1944 ): 271; Arthur G. Klein, "The Lincoln Letter to A Jewish Congregation," Congres­ monograph-length study of the topic in America was published by Morais' student Samuel sional Record, 90, 8 (Fe bruary 29, 1844): A99 3-94; Bertram W. Korn, American Jewry Mendelsohn, one of the two students to graduate from Maimonides College. See Samuel and the Civil War (1951; third ed., New York, 1970), 35-37. Korn has claimed that Mendelsohn, The Criminal Jurisprudence of the Jews (, 1891). Morais "unlike Einhorn and Felsenthal, was not an abolitionist," but above all supported 35· Nussenbaum, 3-4; 145-46; Jewish Record, December 4, 188 5, 5. nation;1 unity for the sake of Republicanism around the world (35) [similar to historians 36. On the strike, see note 6 I. who have criticized Abraham Lincoln for being primarily concerned not with ending 37· Nussenbaum, 149· slavery, but preserving the Union]. This point has been forcefully disputed by Nussenbaum, 38. Ibid., 133-38. 34-42. In addition to the evidence brought by Nussenbaum to prove that Morais opposed 39· Ibid., 138-45. For general background on these issues in nineteenth-century slavery, undoubtedly part of the reason Morais never formally held membership in an American Jewish life, see Naomi W. Cohen, Jews in Christian America (New York and abolitionist organization had to do with the Christian religious zeal of many of these Oxford, 1992); idem., Encounter with Emancipation (Philadelphia, 1984). groups. 40. On Morais' role at the Hebrew Immigrant Society and Jewish Alliance, see 31. Corresponding Secretary Herbert Mead, Indian Rights Association, to SM, Nussenbaum, 63-68. On the causes and course of the mass migration, see Salo Baron, The September 24, 1889, SM Papers, Box 5, FF 5 (CjS). Russian Jew Under Tsars and Soviets (New York, 1987),69-74, esp. 71. 32. Nussenbaum, 145. 166 AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 167

Some in attendance, such as his family, close friends and congregation members, might have mentioned Morais' work with orphans, first at the established in Philadelphia in 1867. Morais had held the post of Orphans' School in London, and later through his involvement with the Professor of and Biblical literature, and after the death of Isaac Jewish Foster Home in Philadelphia. Not a few women would have Leeser in 1868 remained one of the College's principal leaders, along known Morais personally from his support for their charitable associa­ with the Talmudic scholar and rabbi Marcus Jastrow, until its demise in tions such as the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, the Young Women's 1873.44 Those mourning his loss in Italy,45 London and around the Union, the United Hebrew Charities, the Jewish Maternity Association, Jewish world, meanwhile, might have known Morais from his earlier Ezrath Nashim, the National Council of Jewish Women, and as the first years in or perhaps through his participation on the Central Committee of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, an influential interna­ traditional Jewish leader in the United States to support women's right to 46 vote on congregational matters.41 His innumerable public lectures at the tional Jewish defense organization. As for the Eastern European Jewish local Young Men's Hebrew Association, the Hebrew Literary Society, his masses who showed up on the day of his funeral in unprecedented regular instruction at the Hebrew Sunday School Society, at the Hebrew numbers, they would simply have known "Mr. Morais" as the teacher of Education Society of Philadelphia, his role in the founding of the Jewish their children whose humble manner and life-long personal involvement Publication Society, and his myriad unpaid civic contributions would in charitable work endeared him to allY have made Morais a familiar face to most.42 Morais' future obscurity was anticipated at the time of his death by Others might have mentioned Morais' rich body of publications and Joseph Krauskopf, a controversial Reform rabbi in Philadelphia. contributions as a translator, poet, biblical exegete, theologian and Krauskopf, a long-time adversary of the staunchly traditional Morais, historianY Yet again, they might have emphasized his importance for the astutely observed in his memorial tribute that "the historian would not history of American Jewish higher education. In addition to having been hesitate to enroll his name among the world's truest and noblest the driving the force behind the founding of the JTSA in 1886, two immortals. But that will never be known. The eye of the public decades earlier Morais had participated in the creation of the short-lived chronicler found in his exceeding modesty an inexorable concealer. "48 Maimonides College, the "first American Jewish Theological Seminary," One clue to understanding the "concealed" life of this enigmatic Italian­ Anglo-American-Sephardic-Ashkenazic teacher and minister, and the

41. On Morais and the Jewish Foster Home, see Nussenbaum, 59-60; for background on the Jewish Foster Home of Philadelphia, see Dianne Ashton, '''Souls Have No Sex': 44. See Bertram Korn, "Maimonides College: The First American Jewish Theological Philadelphia Jewish Women and the American Challenge," in When Philadelphia Was the Seminary," Eventful Years and Experiences (Cincinnati, 1954), 151-213 (see 166 for Capital of j ewish America, 34, 45; Evelyn Bodek, "'Making Do': Jewish Women and Morais' title); David Uriah Todes, "History of in Philadelphia, 1782- Philanthropy," in jewish Life In Philadelphia, 1830-1940, 148-53. On Morais and the 1873" (Ph.D. diss ., Dropsie College, 1952), whose appendix contains photostatic copies of Female Hebrew Benevolent Society of Philadelphia, see OCC 26, 9 (December 1868): 427. parts of the lost minute book of the College. For Morais' support of the National Council of Jewish Women, see Faith Rogow, Gone to 45· Special memorial services were held in his native Livorno. See the December 1897 Another Meeting: The National Council of jewish Women (Tuscaloosa, 1993), 23 and issues of the Italian Jewish periodicals 1/ Vessilo Israelitico and II Caviere Israelitico for 254, n. 42. For background on Jewish women and philanthropy in Philadelphia, and the memorial tributes. organizations listed here, see Bodek, 143-62. 46. See Nussenbaum, 61; Zosa Szajkowski, "The Alliance Israelite Universelle in the 42. On Morais and his many educational and cultural activities in Philadelphia, see United States," PAjHS 39 (1950): 389-93. Morais curiously did not join the Board of Morais, The jews of Philadelphia, 60 ff.; Nussenbaum, 50-83. On the Hebrew Education Delegates of American Israelites, founded one year before the Alliance in 1859. He did Society, see Fifty Years Work of the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia, 1848-1898 direct the Philadelphia branch of the Alliance when it was established the following year in (Philadelphia, 1899); on the Hebrew Sunday School Society, see "Rosa Mordecai's 1860. See Szajkowski for the friction between the two groups. On the Board of Delegates Recollections," 397-406. On the Hebrew Literature Society, see Souvenir and History of of American Israelites see Max J. Kohler, "The Board of Delegates of American Israelites the Hebrew Literature Society, Philadelphia, PA (n.p., 1905). On the Young Men's 1859-1878," PAjHS 29 (1925): 75-135; Allan Tarshish, "The Board of Delegates of Hebrew Association, see William R. Langfeld, Y.M.H.A. of Philadelphia-A Fifty Year American I raelites, 1859-1878," PAjHS 49 (1959): 4II-27. Chronicle (Philadelphia, 1928) [cited in Nussenbaum, 54, n. 17]; Benjamin Rabinowitz, 47· PjE, November 19, 1897, 3 . "The Young Men's Hebrew Association, 1854-1913," in PAjHS 37 (1947): 221-26. On . 48. Krauskopf, PjE, November 19, 1897,6. The term "traditional" is used throughout the Jewish Publication Society, see Jonathan D. Sarna, JPS: The Americanization of jewish thIS essay to capture Morais' religious orientation, though it understates his fervent belief Culture, 1888-1988 (Philadelphia, 1989). in ~od and the divine origin of the Bible, his resistance to higher biblical criticism, 43. For guides to his published and unpublished writings, see note 3. parttcularly of the Pentateuch, and overstate his commitment to rigidly orthodox standards of observance. A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 169 168 AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY

endow a Morais chair at the Jewish Theological Seminary in his honor obscurity into which he has fallen, can be found in the funeral that declared that "the spontaneous and universal tributes of affection and caused such astonishment and comment in November of 1897. The veneration evoked by the death of the Rev. Sabato Morais are almost depth of feeling his funeral revealed does not, however, only refer back to without precedent in modern Israel, no such outpouring of the people as the man who was mourned or the pathos expressed that day. The size of was seen at his funeral having ever before been known in this country. " 53 the funeral and the details of the service and burial mark a historical Another prominent New Yorker, Daniel P. Hays movingly recorded the transformation in the character of public Jewish funerals in the United impact Morais' funeral made on him: States and hint at fundamental changes then underway within American Jewish communal life. I was so impressed by the occurrence at the funeral of the late Rev. Sabato The phenomenon of mass, public Jewish funerals in the United States Morais, on the fifteenth instant, that I cannot refrain from writing about it ... has received increasing attention in recent years.49 Beginning in 1902 I refer to the ovation paid to his memory by thousands of Russian Jews for with the funeral of "Chief Rabbi" Jacob Joseph in New York City, and whose advancement he had worked and who remembered him as a true followed by the funerals of prominent cultural heroes such as the Yiddish friend. writer Sholem Aleichem in 1916, large-scale Jewish funerals in America The scene in front of the house was a most memorable one. Men, women, and children from the Russian quarter had gathered there long before the drew hundreds of thousands of participants over the decades leading up hour fixed for the funeral ceremonies, and with sorrowful faces, waited to World War Ipo Dramatic public pageants, including political demon­ regardless of the rain, until his body was brought from his house and placed strations, ethnic celebrations, as well as mass funerals, were carefully in the hearse. It was not idle curiosity that held them there, it was no planned and staged. These public ceremonies functioned as occasions for expectation of witnessing impressive funeral ceremonies, but an honest desire the Jewish masses to affirm and defend American Jewish ethnicity. They to pay the last tribute or respect to one whom they regarded as a father. And also offered opportunities for the new immigrants and their children to when the hearse and carriages moved way from the house, they followed it on give collective expression to pent-up emotions of loss and anger. foot, not in any regular order, but as if each one realized that they would Thousands would turn out to mourn a prominent communal figure or to never again feel the kindly influence of his presence and could not bear to protest, for example, the persecution of Jews in Russia in 1903 and have him thus abruptly taken out of their lives. It was a crowd such as follows 1905. These orchestrated ceremonies marked a new professionalization a departing hero on his way to battle for their cause, except that they were and commercialization of American Jewish life while serving as "inte­ subdued and overawed by the magnitude of their grief. At the cemetery, a like scene was being enacted. Masses of these people grating rituals" for immigrant Jewish communities like the Lower East lined the adjoining streets and waited patiently for the funeral to arrive. They Side. 5 1 knew they could not enter the cemetery grounds, because the space was too Morais' funeral occurred five years prior to the first mass public limited to admit them. But there they stood, women holding their children by Jewish funeral in New York City. It was an unprecedented event in the hand and babies in their arms-men with grey hair and other in the prime Philadelphia as well as in American Jewish history and was recognized as of life-a quiet, sad tearful assemblage, waiting for their dead [emphasis in such at the time. The Reverend , leader of New original]. For he was "theirs." They had been welcome at his house at all York City's most prestigious Jewish congregation, the Sephardic Shearith times during his life, and he had been a constant visitor at their humble Israel, proclaimed that "no such minister in this country ever had such a homes. He had been their guide, counselor, and friend in a strange land.54 magnificent funeral. " 52 A circular issued by a committee organized to Additional details of the funeral are found in New York's American Hebrew: 49. Arthur Goren, "Sacred and Secular: The Place of Public Funerals in the Immigrant Life of American Jews," Jewish History 8 (1 994 ): 269-305 ; Ellen Kelman, "Sholem Long before the crowds had begun to assemble, and though they Aleichem's Funeral" (New York, 1916 ); The Making of A National Pageant," YIVO numbered thousands, ten policemen detailed to preserve order found little Annual 20 (1991): 277-304; Leonard Dinnerstein, "The Funeral of Jacob Joseph," in Anti­ Semitism in American History, ed. David A. Gerber (Urbana, IL, 1986), 27 5-30I. 53· Circular, "In Honor of Sabato Morais," copy held in the Charles J. and Mary M. 50. AbrahamJ. Karp, "New York Chooses a Chief Rabbi," PAJHS 44 (March 1955): Cohen Collection, Box I , FF 16 (ClS ). 180-82; Dinnerstein, 275- 301; Goren, "Sacred and Secular," 272. 54· Daniel P. Hays, "Impressions of Dr. Morais' Funeral," AH, November 19, 189 7, 51. Goren, "Sacred and Secular," 299- 300. 71. 52. H. P. Mendes, PJE, Monday, November 19, 1897, 7. 170 A MER I CAN JEW ISH HIS TOR Y A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 171

trouble; for those who came were there simply to tender respect to the dead The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent reported that "distinguished delega­ and had no morbid desire to satisfy, knowing that they could not see the face tions from New York and Baltimore, and elsewhere ... [and] Ministers of their beloved friend, as by his request no one but his family and those who and officers of all the local Jewish congregations and educational and tenderly prepared the body for burial were permitted to gaze upon it. charitable institutions attended the funeral. "59 Within a month of his The service at the house was read by Rev. Dr. H. Pereira Mendes of New death, one group of Eastern European Jews founded a fraternal order in York, but there was no address, at the request of the deceased who also asked Portland, Oregon, called Sabato Morais Lodge 464.60 Krauskopf, Isaac that there be no memorial service. The carriages then conveyed the mourners Mayer Wise, Emil G. Hirsch, Kaufmann Kohler, and Henry Berkowitz to the cemetery ... At the cemetery the burial service of the Portuguese ritual was read by Dr. Mendes and the body, wrapped in a winding sheet, was were among the many prominent Reform leaders who paid moving tenderly placed in the grave upon a layer of green boughs. Sprigs of green tribute in print to a man with whom they had battled, on occasion were cast in by relatives and those who stood about and the company retired fiercely, throughout their lives. to the receiving room where the final services of sepulture were recited. Perhaps the most telling symbol of the diverse composition of the Prayers were read shortly after at the synagogue, and are recited there crowd was the almost certain presence of Philadelphia's Russian-Jewish morning and evening instead of at the house of mourning.55 anarchists. The devout Morais had gained the respect of these secular radicals in r890 while mediating their conflict with the city's wealthy The Morais family, in a special notice of appreciation to the public manufacturers, some of whom belonged to his own congregation. The published in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, wrote: "the scene of last decade leading up to the volatile cloakmakers strike had witnessed Monday profoundly impress[ed] everyone. To have seen how a beloved intensive union organizing throughout the country as well as repressive, father was revered by the vast multitude of his co-religionists intensely violent tactics against the unions, widespread layoffs and social unrest. affected every witness. "56 Despite the risks, Morais intervened and made such an impression Morais' funeral is curious on its face if we consider that the Italian­ during the course of a long summer of negotiations that in the fall "the born Morais, who lectured in English and prayed according to the anarchists called off their pork-eating Ball which was to Sephardic liturgical rite, came from an entirely different cultural universe follow after the strike. "61 from that of the masses who attended his funeral. He did not speak Contemporary accounts indicate that Morais' funeral transcended Yiddish, the so-called "jargon" of the Eastern European immigrants. He (even as it no doubt was influenced by) the Old World custom of publicly was the leader of the wealthiest Sephardic congregation, located in paying homage to an honored and beloved communal leader. The mass North Philadelphia while his Ashkenazic mourners lived in Port Rich­ turnout, for example, did not rest "on a highly disciplined communal mond or south Philadelphia amidst the squalor and congestion of order" as was the case in Europe and a decade later in New York City. 62 immigrant life, what one newspaper reporter called "a stench in the nostrils of decent people. " 57 The variety of people who attended the event or who later produced 59. PJE, November 19, 1897, 3. a torrent of tributes to a man they otherwise shared little or nothing with 60. See William Toll, The Making of an Ethnic Middle Class: Portland Jewry over Four in matters of religion or politics also hints at the special character of Generations (Albany, 1982), 31. Morais' funeral. The American Hebrew observed that the participants 61. For the quote, see Maxwell Whiteman, "The Cloak Makers Strike of 1890," PJE, October 23, 1964, 44. For additional sources on the strike see Nussenbaum, 149-53: included "men of different faith, honored in the community, some (Philadelphia) Public Ledger, July 22, 1890, 2; August 4, 3; August 5, 2; August 8, 6; laymen, others whose garb expressed their devotion to religion, [which] August 15, I; August 19, I; August 23,2; August 26, I; PJE, July 25, 1890, 5; August 8, was evidence of the esteem in which he was held by men of all creeds. "58 6; August 15, 6; August 29, 6. For an account of Morais' Yom Kippur service sermon admonishing the factory owners, see Marvin Nathan, "Discussion," 371-72. See also, the 55 . AH, November 19, 1897, 66. Morais Ledger, p. 441, SM Papers Box 18 (C]S); Morais, Jews of Philadelphia, 233 ; 56. PJE, November 19, 1897, 3· Maxwell Whiteman, "Western Impact on East European Jews," in Immigrants and 57 . The Sunday Mercury, August 10, 1890, reprinted in AJA 9 (April 1957): 36. Religion in Urban America, eds. Randall M . Miller and Thomas D. Marzik (Philadelphia, According to the preface to the reprint, the article was authored by Louis Edward Levy, 1977), II7-37· For a telling contrast, see how the anarchists in New York City attacked publisher of the Sunday Mercury and founder in 1884 of the Association of Jewish "chief rabbi" Jacob Joseph in New York City and defiantly staged their Yom Kippur Ball, Immigrants of Philadelphia. in Abraham J. Karp, Haven and Home (New York, 1981), 109. 58. AH, November 19, 1897, 65· 62. Cf. Goren, "Sacred and Secular," 270. 172 AM E RIC A N JEW ISH HIS TOR Y A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 173

While all American Jewish funerals were "voluntary" in character, no exhortations were needed nor were any issued for those attending humility," but for good reason there was no mention of Spektor as a 67 Morais' funeral to leave their shops or close their stores.63 News of the ministering rabbi. death seems to have spread by word of mouth. In fact, one newspaper With the possible exception of the funeral procession in I905 for reported a spontaneous kind of memorial service for Morais the day Kasriel Sarasohn, the Orthodox publisher of the Yiddish daily Tageblat, before the funeral on Sunday, November I4, "in the down town section Morais' mass funeral differed in style, if not in size, from the orches­ of the city, among the poorer classes of Jews, who all day yesterday trated public funerals in New York City. 68 The I909 funeral for the congregated in groups on the streets bewailing the loss of their common secular Yiddish playwright Jacob Gordin, for example, was organized by friend, teacher, and protector. " 64 Joseph Barondess, whom Arthur Goren depicts as the "proverbial klal The spontaneous outpouring witnessed on Sunday and the massive tu'er-the ubiquitous communal doer-and beloved master-of-ceremo­ turnout for the funeral procession the next day also cannot be explained nies, parade marshall and eulogizer. " 69 By contrast, while Morais' by comparison to a gathering of Hasidim mourning the loss of their funeral did feature a procession which originated from his home, Morais , or to a throng of Eastern European Jews lamenting the death of a had explicitly forbade any kind of vainglorious effusions or pageantry en prominent legal authority (). 65 In short, Morais never sought a route to or at the burial site, including the delivering of the traditional following and was not a legal authority. To understand the difference it hesped [eulogy] or the conducting of a memorial service. 70 must be borne in mind that the traditional, Eastern European rabbinical Reading the testimonials to Morais one cannot help but notice the leader was not a "ministering" rabbi but above all a judge and recurrent expressions of a profound and personal bond of love people communal authority removed from close, daily contact with the general Jewish population.66 For example, when Isaac Elhanan Spektor, the famous Lithuanian rabbi, died in I905, thousands of mourners flooded 67. Goren, "Sacred and Secular," 273· the streets of Kovno and openly wept. The eulogies delivered, however, 68. Goren, "Sacred and Secular," 276 writes: "There were no 'crashing bands,' 'no did not discuss the personal bond he had with the masses who came to panoply of purple,' and no flowers (possibly an allusion to Italian funerals and to the mourn him. The speakers stressed the rabbi's "wisdom and compassion, majestic funeral of the recently deceased Catholic Archbishop of New York). A simple the profundity and originality of his writings, his humanity in interpret­ informality marked the occasion." It should be pointed out, however, that while descriptions of this procession bear a close resemblance to that of Morais, the actual details ing personal law, his public service as conciliator and diplomat, and his of the funeral service differ in kind. At Sarasohn's funeral, for example, it was reported by the New York Evening Post that when it came time to deliver eulogies, "the object of every rabbi was to excite the audience by his speech to tears and loud lamentation" (Goren, 63. Ibid., 269. "Sacred and Secular," 277), whereas no eulogies were delivered at Morais' funeral. For 64. (Philadelphia) Public Ledger?, Monday, November 15, 1897 (the date is inferred more on the subject of the traditional eulogy, or hesped, see note 70. Another intriguing from the first line which refers to the funeral that will take place "at 2:00 p.m. this exception might be the mass funeral of a female Jewish communal worker, Mary afternoon"), Charles J. and Mary M. Cohen Collection, Box 1 FF 16 (C]S). Siegelstein, on the of New York City on Sunday, November 5, 1905. See 65. Cf. Goren, "Sacred and Secular," 270, on the pilgrimages of the Bratslaver The New York Times, November 6, 1905,9. There are important differences, of course, Hasidim to their rebbe's grave in Uman, ; also, d. the mass funeral of the such as the fact that Morais' funeral occurred on a Monday, entailing financial hardship Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson held on June 12, 1994, reported in The for the attenders, as well as the fact that Morais was not of Eastern European origin New York Times, June 13, 1994, AI. (Siegelstein was married to a Romanian Jew and was active in the Romanian Aid Society). 66. On the role and function of the office of the rabbinate in Eastern Europe, see Jacob 69· Goren, "Sacred and Secular," 279. Katz, Tradition and Crisis, trans. Bernard Cooperman (New York, 1993), 72-75 and 70. This custom by itself is not unprecedented. Morais' friend, Marco Mortara, the idem., Out of the Ghetto (New York, 1978), 142-60. For the contrast with the emergent, chief rabbi of Mantua, had left similar instructions for his funeral which were carried out professionalized "ministering" rabbi in the West, see Ismar Schorsch, "Emancipation and three years earlier in Italy (see JE, 9, s.v. Mortara: "In his will he wrote his epitaph, the Crisis of Religious Authority-The Emergence of the Modern Rabbinate," in Revolu­ containing merely biographical data, and expressed the wish that no sermon should be tion and Evolution: I848 in German-Jewish History, eds. Werner Mosse, Arnold Paucker, preached at his funeral and no eulogy published in the newspapers"). On the status of the and Reinhard Rurup (Tubingen, 1981),206-54; Stephen Poppel, "The Politics of Religious eulogy or hesped in Jewish law, see e.g., Shu/khan 'arukh, Yoreh De'ah, hi/khot avilut, no. Leadership: The Rabbi in Nineteenth-Century Hamburg," LBIYB 28 (1983): 439-70. On 344· On the Italian Jewish tradition of the eulogy dating from early modern period, see the Orthodox American rabbinate at the end of the nineteenth-century, see Gurock, Elliot Horowitz, "Speaking of the Dead: The Emergence of the Eulogy among Italian Jewry "Resisters and Accomodaters," esp. 100-127. of the Sixteenth Century," in Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, ed. David B. Ruderman (Los Angeles and Oxford, 1992), 129-62. 174 AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 175

felt for him. To be sure, memorial tributes and newspaper reports can I will not have any oration, obituaries, memorial services, nor any kind of hardly be taken at face value as historically reliable evidence. But the praise indulged in to do me honor. If my children wish to keep the 7 days of descriptions of Morais' funeral cannot be dismissed merely as heartfelt mourning, let my sons do so morning and evening in the synagogue, and my exaggeration. Leading members of the Philadelphia and American daughters in their home. 73 Jewish community repeatedly emphasized that they had never witnessed The details of the burial also provide startling insight into the unusual such a scene. Undoubtedly (and in contrast to smaller-scale funerals of character of the funeral and its relation to the man being mourned. For prominent Jews in America earlier in the nineteenth century), the size of example, while a hearse carried Morais' body to the cemetery in a closed Morais' funeral presupposed a mass migration of Eastern European coffin, according to religious tradition, when the procession arrived at Jews, most of whom had arrived in the country only within the previous the grave, his enshrouded body was removed from the casket and placed two decades. But never again would such a distinctly non-Eastern directly in the earth, "upon a layer of green boughs," and covered with European figure receive the kind of spectacular tribute granted Sabato quicklime. The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent described this element of Morais at his funeral. his burial as being in accordance with "antique orthodox custom,"74 but On the other hand, the massive public turnout is not fully explainable in fact the particulars seem to have been of more recent origin. In the by reference to the man being mourned. Indeed, any sincere mourning specific instructions he left regarding his burial, Morais effectively process ultimately is less concerned for the one lost than it is with removed control over the disposition of his body from the traditional consoling those experiencing loss. Alasdair MacIntyre has argued, for hevrah kadisha, or Jewish burial society. Instead, he placed his trust in example, that for the heroic societies of antiquity, "it is through the his family, asking them to ensure that his body be left alone prior to performance of burial rites that the family and the community can burial. In a letter to his daughter Nina, on May 25, I896, Morais restore their integrity after the death of what was part of themselves. "71 explained that he This resembles what Morais' contemporaries sensed about the massive turnout for their fallen leader: "It was a crowd such as follows a disliked a hurried burial, and the exposal of the body. Unless I die of a departing hero on his way to battle for their cause, except that they were contagious disease, let my corpse remain unburied until signs of putrefecation subdued and overawed by the magnitude of their grief ... For he was are visible. Then dispense with the usual washing, as practised by our people, 'theirs.'''72 Though not orchestrated to affirm ethnic pride, the Morais but let me be wrapped, with the clothing which I happen to have on, in a sheet. Let quick lime be put in the grave, in which I shall lay without coffin, funeral did serve a kind of integrative or mending function, evidenced by and another layer of quick lime on the top of me so that the flesh be speedily the spontaneity of events leading up to and including the funeral itself. consumed.75 The need for this integrative function of mourning as collective mending can also be inferred from Morais' above-mentioned instruc­ The following January Morais sent a letter to Emanuel confessing "an tions to eliminate all ostentation from the funeral service. It was well inconquerable dislike against the practise of being washed and shrouded." publicized in advance in the local newspapers that "in accordance with Preferring that his feelings not be made known, Morais requested that the strongly expressed desire of the deceased rabbi, the obsequies will be "people may be told that as a means of atonement, I expressed the desire of the plainest character, he having asked that no orations, eulogies or of being wrapped in a sheet over the clothes, which I happened to have memorial services of any kind be held. The family, in compliance with these injunctions, have requested that no flowers be sent to the house." These instructions, which Morais sent in a series of letters to his eldest 73· SM to Nina (Morais) Cohen, May 25,1896, SM Papers, Box 7, FF 9 (ClS); d. AH, November 19, 1897, 66; PJE, November 19, 1897, 3. In an undated fragmentary child Nina and her husband Emanuel Cohen (whom Morais named as holograph found among the Morais papers, Morais writes, apparently in response to a executors of his estate), implied that even the traditional mourning question put to him concerning Jewish burial practices, that "the beautiful custom of giving period, or shivah, was voluntary for his children: the 'meal of consolation; based upon Biblical and Rabbinical authority, has unfortunately greatly degenerated. So has the practice of sitting low all the seven days (emphasis in original), as a mark of humiliation, become unnecessary and in America almost abro­ 71. Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (2nd ed.; Notre Dame, gated." 1984), 127. 74· PJE, November 19, 1897, 3. 72. Hays, "Impressions," AH, November 19, 1897, 71. 75· SM to Nina Morais, May 25, 1896, SM Papers, Box 7, FF 9 (ClS). A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 177 176 A MER I CAN JEW ISH HIS TOR Y

personal explanations for Morais' somber reflections, namely: the loss of on at the hour of death, and being buried between two layers of quick his mother when he was fifteen, the poverty and privation Morais' family lime, so that the flesh be soon consumed." Morais explained that this in Italy knew which first pushed him to leave Livorno in search of work, "last mentioned plan has not been opposed by the rabbis. I have seen it the personal pain he must have felt having spent his life at a great followed in Italy, and I heard that the late ecclesiastical Chief of the distance from his family and native home, the premature death of his Portuguese Congregation in London, Benjamin Artom, was so in­ wife Clara in 1872, leaving him alone (he never remarried) with seven terred. " 76 young children to rear, and an extended period of illness at the end of his In the course of this sensitive discussion, Morais disclosed another life. Given these elements, and the personal tone of Morais' comment, I important clue which helps decipher a life kept carefully concealed. think it unjustified to describe this frame of mind as a depression or to Earlier in the same letter, while gently answering his son-in-Iaw's hesitant attribute its cause to external circumstances such as Darwinism.78 inquiries about plans for his burial, Morais explained: If Morais was not suffering from depression when he wrote out his You did not give me any "pain" by approachjng that subject. Life has never last wishes, neither were his carefully considered views about burial and been to me a delightful gift from my parents, and that for reasons wruch it cremation an idiosyncracy of his old age. These views, I submit, point to were idle and foolish to relate. At one time I spoke and wrote against a profound, consistent aspect of his personality-his proclivity for self­ cremation. In later years, my mind underwent decided change. Still, as I have effacement. This character trait appears in virtually every description of already stated to you when in Philadelphia, the fear of shocking the Jewish Morais and is evident throughout his writings. As The New York Times 77 community made me reconsider the determination of being cremated. wrote, "his demeanor in social life was shrinking, almost timid. "79 Charles J. Cohen, twice president of Mikveh Israel, recalled that "such a Morais' modesty and sensitivity help to explain his attitude toward simple matter as the wearing of a silk gown to lend dignity to the person burial and cremation in particular but more importantly toward his own he strenuously resisted, until a committee of earnest women of the life in general, which had a morose side to it. According to one Congregation prepared a suitable robe, which he was persuaded to interpretation, Morais suffered at the end of his life from a depression accept and adopt, although the canonical cap that accompanied it was caused by a Galut [diaspora] mentality whose "pillars of low profile and declined. "80 One other example may suffice to convey this aspect of his usefulness" no longer functioned, and because of the decline of religious personality. During his lifetime, Morais repeatedly shunned the titles observance, the impact of Darwinism, new scientific discoveries, and the "rabbi" and "doctor" despite his having received rabbinical ordination spectre of new, virulent racial theories. It seems to me that there are more in Italy and an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Before he died, Morais instructed his daughter Nina to make sure that on 76. SM to Emanuel Cohen, January 16, 1897, SM Papers, Box 7, FF II (ClS). his tombstone "no title whatsoever must be attached to my name. On the 77. SM to Emanuel Cohen, January 16, 1897, SM Papers, Box 7, FF II (ClS). The tomb stone: [written in Hebrew] "Shabbtai Morais," [written in English] issue of cremation had been the subject of ongoing debate in Italy during the nineteenth century. See Elia Benamozegh, Sefer Ya'aneh ba-'esh (Livorno, 1886). On Morais' early "Sabato Morais" and the date of death shall suffice." Morais made this 81 view, see his sermons "Cremation-Incompatible with Jewish Precepts," (undated) ms., last directive a condition of his will. SM Papers, Box 13, FF2I(ClS) and "Sermon on Cremation," AH, April 16, 1880,99 (cited in Davis, "Annotated Bibliography," 89, no. 248). See also the lengthy letter Morais sent to H. P. Mendes in 1887, summarized by Davis, "Annotated Bibliography," 85, no. 216. 78. Corre, 30-3 I. Davis remarks that Morais opposed cremation as a violation of Jewish law. Davis then 79· The New York Times, Saturday, November 13, 1897, 7. quotes Morais' observation that in Italy "the cremation system is fast gaining adherents 80. See Charles J. Cohen, "Dr. Morais' Relation to the Congregation," in Commemo­ (for the country is small and the population is large). The Rabbis in Italy are loth to ration, 13; On the "priestly garments" episode, see Mrs. Elias P. Levy and Mrs. Samuel encourage a usage so contrary to our history, but they fear that a refusal to inter the Hart to SM and Morais' response [no exact date-1851], SM Papers, Box 1, FF 8 (CJS). cremated may drive families bereaved of their relations from the synagogue." See JE, s.v. 81. SM to Nina (Morais) Cohen, May 25,1896, SM Papers, Box 7, FF 9 (ClS); d. AH, "cremation": "some Italian Kabbalists were opposed to cremation on the ground that it is November 19, 1897, 66; PJE, November 19, 1897,3. Morais Will, Article 1, Philadelphia not in consonance with the spirit and traditions of Judaism." A similar discussion took City Archives, Register of Wills, Estate no. 1710 (1897), filed November 2.2,1897; a copy place in England around the same time-see Benjamin Schwezik, Teshubah 'al Debar ha­ is held in the SM Papers, Box 17, FF 22 (ClS). On the preparation of Morais' will, see nisrafin. Responsum with regard to the ashes of cremated bodies in which are explained Emanuel Cohen to SM, September 10, 1893, SM Papers, Box 7, FF 3 (ClS); SM to Emanuel some laws referring to this strange practice. (London, 1888), noted in Lloyd P. Gartner, Cohen, May 25, 1896, Box 7, FF 9 (ClS). The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870-1914 (London, 1960), 303 . 178 A MER I CAN JEW ISH HIS TOR Y A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 179

Morais' attitude toward his body also extended to his corpus of and even in planning for his own burial he consciously tried to erase writings. In a letter to Nina, dated [Sunday] July 19, 1896, written in the himself from historical memory. Krauskopf eloquently explained these evening following the conclusion of Tisha be-Av (the fast day for the related problems of memorialization: observance of the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem), Morais, who often published anonymously, reveals that For the critical eye of man [Morais] has left behind no visible monument of great achievements, but to the eye of God he has reared a monument far "there has been a period in my life, when my aversion to publishing greater than any of those famed by man. That greatness was his goodness, anything of mine, or about myself, determined me to deal with my which in point of intrinsic merit will compare with the greatest wonders of writings as with my body, viz., to have them consumed in two layers of genius. Were it possible for man to measure the amount of good he dispensed quick lime." 82 In the next breath, however, Morais "reconsidered that among the sorrowing and afflicted ... the historian would not hesitate to thought, for some things which I may have translated from Hebrew or enroll his name among the world's truest and noblest immortals ... To do Italian, and something original may be of service to modern Jewish good was the first duty of his creed, to do it in silence always, and in secrecy literature. In that case it would be selfish to carry out the original idea. "83 wherever possible, was his second.86 In short, Morais' plans for his funeral point to a fusion of temperament If Morais' legacy was to elude future historians, at least the memory of and principle. Morais was modest and self-effacing; more importantly, the masses who attended his funeral would linger as a testimonial to his he sincerely believed he was only "dust and ashes" before God, as he is goodness. Indeed, many of those writing in 1897 could find no better reported to have told his well-wishers at the JTSA who surprised him in vehicle to express the character of collective loss than by referring to the early May 1897 with a celebration just after his seventy-fourth birthday spectacle of the enormous gathering of people overflowing the streets of (only six months before his death).84 Philadelphia that Monday afternoon. This figure of the masses bearing Given the prominent place Morais occupies in nineteenth-century witness to the love felt for Morais is a recurrent trope. The American American Jewish history, how do we explain the forgetting and scholarly Hebrew voiced the widely held opinion that neglect of him a century later? This process of forgetting did not merely result from passage of time but rather points to profound changes then No worthier tribute could be paid to Sabato Morais' attachment to the cause underway which affected subsequent interpretations of what was deemed of the poor than the vast multitude that sought entrance to the house on the worthy of being remembered. To begin with, however, Morais' historio­ day of the funeral, and filled the street and square in front of the house, graphical neglect is traceable to the funeral itself. Some commentators following reverently so long as the carriage was in sight and then taking the defined the spectacle of the mass funeral as a solution to the problem of [street] cars to the cemetery, where an equally large crowd of men and women memorialization Morais posed to his mourners: how to remember had long before proceeded. The gathering of these thousands was testimony to the love that was borne to Sabato Morais by his lowly brethren in faithY someone who wanted to enshroud both his life and his death in a cloak of self-effacement. 85 To understand Morais and the process of his being Some of the memorial notices also manifest a clear historical con- forgotten is first to understand the extent to which throughout his life sciousness of social changes then underway. For some observers, Morais' funeral marked the passing of "an older generation" ofJewish ministers. Reform Rabbi J. B. Grossman, for example, contrasted this "champion 82.. SM to Nina Cohen, July 19, 1896 (9th of Ab) SM Papers, Box, 7, FF 10 (CJS). The of the old spirit of orthodoxy" to "the new spirit of reform." The scholar original letter is missing from the collection at CJS; the statement quoted here is taken from a typed transcription, apparently prepared by Cyrus Adler in preparation for his biography and European-trained Rabbi Marcus Jastrow defined this generation gap of Morais (see Davis, "Annotated Bibliography," 60, for Adler's plan to write Morais' in terms of the inroads of materialism on the religious vocation. biography). According to Jastrow, Morais belonged to 83. Morais, curiously, saved everything. Writing to her brother Henry on April 2.5, 1898, regarding the disposition of their father's personal papers, Nina complains that "as the older generation of Jewish ministers in America who differ from the regard the letters in the boxes-I am finding them a very tedious task as every scrap of younger generation essentially in that the former were contented with giving paper or card appears to have been kept." Nina Cohen to H. S. Morais, April 2.5, 1898, Papers of Henry S. Morais, YU Archives. 84· Morais, Memoir, 4. 86. Krauskopf, "Tribute," PJE, November 19, 1897, 6. 85 . See AH, November 19, 1897; PJE, November 19, 1897. 87· AH, November 19, 1897, 65; d. Morais, Memoir, 32.. 180 AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 181

the impetus to charitable and educational work, stimulating the nobler ambitions dormant in the hearts of those who to all appearances are entirely What is noteworthy, however, is that Morais had explained his own absorbed in the engrossing pursuits of wealth and material comforts, thus conception of religious piety and vocation in feminine terms decades causing institution after institution to spring forth, organization after organi­ earlier, in his inaugural Sabbath sermon delivered at Mikveh Israel, on zation to be formed and making of scattered individuals a united and active March 22, I 8 5I.92 Morais used that occasion to express to his potential community with a character of its own, yet unconsciously bearing, as I said congregation his fundamental views about the meaning and purpose of before, the stamp of those silent and often ignored guides and directors that Jewish worship, of prayer and ritual observance. Standing before the keep in the background ready to come forward when their help is needed, and congregation for the first time and preaching in English, Morais to retire again, leaving the practical men to manage and execute the declared: institutions of their creation.88 True worship resides in the heart, and truly it is by purifying our hearts that Those who knew and loved Morais repeatedly referred to him in their we best worship God; still the ordinances which we are enjoined to perform memorial tributes in idealized terms, as a religious role model, a prophet aim but at this object: to sanctify our immortal soul, to make it worthy of its like , a man of constancy, duty, absolute sincerity, piety and sublime origin ... We must also be upon our guard lest the essential should humility.89 At the same moment in which they were writing these tributes become secondary; we must take heed not to confound true devotion with to him, however, these very same traits were diminishing in worth in false piety. The former is simple, modest, it does not strive to attract the culturally specific ways. For example, if one were to read "women" in attention of men, but like the devoted Hannah, it speaks with the heart, the place of Jastrow's "older generation," these descriptions also can be seen lips move and the voice is scarcely audible. The latter is clamorous, affected, to reflect the "feminization" of the figure of the rabbi and particularly of full of ostentation.93 the (male) religious vocation. The "silent and often ignored guides and Morais drew upon the "simple, modest" biblical Hannah (I Samuel directors that keep in the background ready to come forward when their I: I 3) to convey his conception of true religious piety and d uty. True help is needed" closely resembles the nineteenth-century idealization of worship, Morais explained, resembles the act of a simple yet devout women as pious, self-sacrificing enablers, moral guideposts responsible woman, barren of child but not of faith, who personally addresses God, for the education of the young and for nurturing and strengthening the not through public ostentation but almost imperceptibly through whis­ bonds of communal life. In fact, the synagogue, the spiritual center of pered prayer. Morais' life's work, had been undergoing for decades a process of Morais' attitudes about women and piety can be understood biographi­ feminization. As Morais himself observed in I892, attendance at weekly 90 cally insofar as he spent his entire life surrounded by females. He grew up services increasingly depended on women to fill the pews. Part of what with seven sisters, his mother profoundly influenced the course of his life, explains the decline of interest in Morais as a major American Jewish he later fathered five daughters of his own, and he had a number of close leader, in other words, was the cultural feminization of the values he embodied and the diminishing worth attached to the communal roles he 91 Lois Banner (New York, 1974); Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture played. (New York, 1977). For studies of women as organizers, see Estelle Freedman, "Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, 1870-1930," in Feminist 88. Marcus Jastrow, PJE, November 19, 1897, 6. Studies 5 (Fall 1979): 512-29; Arlene Kaplan Daniels, Invisible Careers: Women Civic 89. See "Tributes" in PJE, AH, November 19, 1897, and note 3. Leaders form the Volunteer World (Chicago, 1988). On Jewish women and the idealiza­ 90. On the feminization of the synagogue, see Rogow, 46 and the sources cited on 253, tion of feminine piety, see Karla Goldman, "The Ambivalence of : n. 27. See Morais' own observations of this phenomenon in A Discourse Delivered on Kaufmann Kohler and the Ideal Jewish Woman," AJH 79 (Summer 1990): 477-99. For Sabbath Bemidbar, Sivan the 2d, 5662 (May 28, 1892) It Being The Thirty-Second more general background on American Jewish women, voluntarism and communal life, see Anniversary of the Consecration of the Synagogue on Seventh Street above Arch AJH 70 (September 1980), guest editor June Sochen; Nancy B. Sinkoff, "Educating for (Philadelphia, 1892), 8. 'Proper' Jewish Womanhood: A Case Study in Domesticity and Vocational Training, 91. On women, religion, and gender in nineteenth century America, see Barbara 1897-19~6," AJH 77 (June 1988): 572-99; Beth S. Wenger, "Jewish Women and Welter, Dimity Conviction: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens, Voluntarism: Beyond the Myth of Enablers," AJH 79 (Autumn 1989): 16-36; Paula OH, 1976); Carrol Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representa­ America (New York, 1985). On "feminization," see Barbara Welter, "The Feminization of tion of Women (Seattle and London, 1995). American Religion, 1800-1860," in Clio's Consciousness Raised, eds. Mary Hartman and 9 2 • The Asmonean, 3, 23, March 28, 1851, 181. 93. Ibid., 181. A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 183 182 AM E RIC A N JEW ISH HIS TOR Y

gaining public recognition. As Morais once put it, "to exercise social and female friends whom he knew through his charitable and congregational domestic virtues is to serve the Lord and Redeemer. "96 For Morais, work. But these attitudes toward women and piety, typical though they communal and charitable work functioned as a form of worship, a were of his time in some ways, also reflected a sincere religious and moral sacrificial service of the heart ('avodah). Morais followed the biblical principle inculcated during Morais' youth in Livorno. writings he read so carefully, such as Jeremiah and Ecclesiastes, in During the first quarter of the nineteenth century an important pronouncing earthly achievements "vanities. "97 For example, in May program of merchant reform was introduced into Livorno which trans­ 1897, when Morais publicly opposed the impending convention of the formed the self-understanding of its Jewish community. Beginning in first world Zionist congress, he explicitly drew upon Jeremiah and March 1832, shortly before Morais' ninth birthday, a school of "recipro­ Ecclesiastes to declare political a "vanity, wherein there is no cal instruction," teaching both religious and secular subjects, was opened usefulness. " 98 In principle Morais objected to a convention to advance for the Jewish children of the city, patterned after the non-Jewish schools political Zionism because he judged the essentially secular call for a already established there. The reciprocal education schools were origi­ Jewish return to the to be in conflict with the traditional nally intended to serve a broader social reform program "as a practical religious doctrine that only God, not Jews, should initiate a messianic and effective means of educating the lower classes." The reciprocal restoration. But Morais' opposition also reflected a religious sensibility system, started in England at the end of the eighteenth century by rooted in the idea that true piety involved humble submission to God's William Lancaster, made a select group of older children responsible for will. Three months later, in August 1897, political Zionism was born at guiding and monitoring the younger ones, with a single teacher oversee­ Basle, and three months after that Morais died. ing the supervision of the school. These schools, with some modific~tions, The year 1897 constitutes a pivotal date in the history of modern found their way to Tuscany after the Napoleonic invasions. In Llvorno Jewish politics that directly bears upon our 4nderstanding of subsequent the schools-to which Morais himself alludes in his "History of the judgements about what would constitute a "usable past" worthy of Jewish Congregation of Leghorn" (1891)94-reportedly emphasized, in being remembered. The year Morais died saw the birth of both political David LoRomer's words, a "spirit of association," cultivated "gentle­ Zionism and Jewish (the Bund). Zionist thinkers in particular ness" (mansuetudine) and harmony among the students, and aimed at were preoccupied in the decades after Morais' death with the creation of nothing less than the "moral perfection of the population," with special a New Jewish Man, akin to revolutionary efforts to produce a New emphasis placed on educating young girls. Characteristic of educational Negro, New Woman, or, later, a New Soviet. Max Nordau, a disciple of reform throughout Europe and America at this time, women were the founding father of political Zionism, Theodore Herzl, spoke about a increasingly viewed as the backbone of civil society and the foundation new, muscular Judaism (Muskeljudentum / yahadut ha-shririm), envi­ of a stable polity as the heart of strong families. Consequently, women's sioning a new Jewish masculinity.99 education and moral sphere of activity could no longer be neglected, an outlook intrinsic to the kinds of activities to which Morais devoted himself in later years. 95 96. Quoted in Nussenbaum, 130. 97· Ecclesiastes 1:2; Jeremiah 16:19. Morais translated the book of Jeremiah into Morais identified true power and authority with God, not with English for the reorganized Jewish Publication Society. His translation remained unrevised worldly accomplishments, political muscle, entering the public sphere or at the time of his death and was completed posthumously by his daughter Nina. See the unpublished letter of Nina Morais to H. S. Morais, April 25, 1898, Papers of Henry S. Morais, YU Archives: "The Jeremiah was completed a month ago and sent to Dr. [Marcus] 94. SM, "The History of the Jewish Congregation of Leghorn," 356: "Highest among Jastrow [editor of the JPS Bible translation committee]. I hope that he will permit me to the high, stands the educational institute, which ~omprises twenty-one ~chools, each make another version of the whole before the manuscript is finally accepted. In my opinion, seeking to attain a specified object. Thus scores of mfants under the supenntendance of the translation is fine, clear and vigorous." well-trained female teachers, acquire rudimental knowledge and are promoted from grade 9 8. SM, "The Zionist Movement," PJE, June 4, 1897, 1. to grade, always joining secular to religious studies, so that wh.ile to a male. child, .th~t 99· On the theme of "muscular" Zionism see Max Nordau, "Muskeljudentum," in institution affords the means of becoming a bookeeper, a mechaniC, or a Rabbi, to a girl It Juedische Turnzeitung (June 1903), excerpted and translated by J. Hessing in Paul Mendes­ offers the facilities of gaining accomplishments fitting her for the parlor not less than for Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History the kitchen." Cf. SM, IHL, 190, for memories of "my earliest school days." (New York and Oxford, 1980), 434-35. For discussion, see Anita Shapira, Land and 95. I am indebted to David G. LoRomer, Merchants and Reform in Livorno, 181~- Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948 (New York, 1992). I am grateful to 1868 (Berkeley, 1987), 171-88 for his enlightening discussion of educational reform m Stanislawski for sparking my thinking on this topic. Livorno during this time. 184 AM E RIC A N JEW ISH HIS TOR Y A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 185

Though politically engaged in his own day, the "feminine" Morais did not provide a legacy for "muscular" Zionism. Morais' humble personal­ At least one additional factor, intimately related to the subject of ity and public opposition to political Zionism contributed to the future gender and the politics of memory, also contributed to the forgetting of marginalization of this "representative of an older generation." Addi­ Morais: the enduring impact of a new scientific ethos and the consequent tional support for this conclusion can be gained by comparing Morais' professionalization of spheres of public service like the rabbinate and fate with that of the classical American Reform movement of Judaism in social work and of fields of learning like philosophy and history. Morais' the following decades, which languished under the leadership of Kaufmann outlook combined a close relationship between knowledge and ethics, Kohler, who vehemently opposed the new Jewish nationalism. On the communal unity and God, republicanism as social democracy and an other hand, Morais' well-known successor, Solomon Schechter and the emotional bond of brotherhood to all humanity, fundamentally an­ "rabbinical Zionists" of the modern lTSA, allied with the remarkable chored to the authoritative truth of biblical revelation. The new scientific dissident Reform rabbi and communal leader Judah Magnes, actively ethos, partly originating in an Enlightenment attack on revelation and promoted American Zionism and succeeded in transforming the modern clericalism, made reason a basis of authority, was universal in scope and Seminary into the center of the largest movement of American Juda­ method, pursued a detached ideal of objectivity, and was empowered by ism. loo a new system of credentials. The new ideal eclipsed Morais' rabbinic humanist sensibility under concrete historical conditions then transform­ It is ironic that during the late nineteenth century, while Morais l04 continued to embrace and identify with an idealization of feminine piety, ing traditional Jewish communal life. Jewish women were themselves, in the words of Beth Wenger, moving At the end of the nineteenth century the United States experienced "beyond the myth of enablers. "101 Jewish women began transforming radical changes in the relationship between society and knowledge which their traditional roles and volunteer work by moving in ever greater affected the cultural valuation of socially assigned gender roles for numbers into the public sphere. According to Wenger, this "volunteer women and men. "The methods of science," according to Ira Robinson, work, initially designed for women's selfless activities, allowed women to "were to separate the amateur from the professional, the dilettante from acquire a sense of self-hood and gender consciousness while sharpening the dedicated specialist in the context of an age in which scienticity was leadership and organizational skills." 102 In the broader terms of the late the hallmark of the modern and the authoritative."1 05 By applying this nineteenth century, a time of heady optimism, of exploration, coloniza­ characterization to the kinds of voluntary and philanthropic work tion and imperial expansion, Morais' outlook was quaint at best.103 performed by Morais and other American Jewish women and men during this time and then analyzing these changes in terms of gender it is immediately evident how a nonegalitarian cultural differentiat/on 100. See Arthur A. Goren, "Spiritual Zionists and Jewish Sovereignty," in The occurred between volunteer women, ministers, unaccredited "amateurs" Americanization of the Jews, eds. Robert M. Seltzer and Norma J. Cohen (New York, and "dilettantes" and the credentialed professionals. 1995), 165-92. For background on this early period and the direction of American From its ear~y associational foundations American Jewry was moving Zionism, see Ben Halpern, "The Americanization of Zionism, 1880-1930," AJH 69 from voluntansm to professionalism in its leadership patterns. The (September 1979): 15-33; Allon Gal, "The Mission Motif in American Zionism (1898- 1948)," AJH 75 (June 1986): 363-85; Naomi W. Cohen, American Jews and the Zionist concurrent professionalization of both Jewish communal workers and Idea (New York, 1975). the office of the rabbinate profoundly affected the lives of Jewish women 101. Wenger, "Jewish Women and Voluntarism: Beyond the Myth of Enablers," 16- 36, and additional sources cited, 17, n. 3. 102. Ibid., 17. 103. If the political figures with whom Morais identified most were the mid-nineteenth .104. Donald J. Wilson, Science, Community and the Transformation of American century republicans, Mazzini and Lincoln, as H. S. Morais states (Morais, Memoir, 23), the Phtl.osop~y, I860-I930 (Chicago and London, 1990); Dorothy Ross, The Origins of the figure with whom he might be most usefully contrasted would be and SOClal .SClences (New Y~rk, 19.91); . Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The Objectivity the later generation of Republicans Roosevelt led (including the life-long bachelor and Ques~/On and the Amerl.can H,stOrical Profession (Cambridge, 1988 ); David Hollinger, prominent Philadelphia Jewish leader Judge Mayer Sulzberger, one of the main actors in Moms ~ohen and the SCIentIfic Ideal (Cambridge, MA, 1975); Bruce Kuklick, Churchmen the reorganization of the JTSA in 1902), or the Jewish nationalists discussed above. On and Phllos~~hers: From Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey (New Haven and London, 8 Roosevelt's interest in the "manly arts" and the centrality of national honor to his political 19 5); RelIgIOn and Twentieth Century American Intellectual Life, MichaelJ. Lacey, ed. (New York, 1989). outlook, see Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (Ba ltimore and London, 1989). 1°5· Ira Robinson, "The Invention of American Jewish History," AJH 81 (Autumn 1994): 315. 186 AM E RIC A N JEW ISH HIS TOR Y A. Kiron: The Funeral and Forgetting of Sabato Morais 187

and men. Professionalization further eroded the already diminished twenty-four America's first Ph.D. in Semi tics from Johns Hopkins authority and prestige of the uncredentialed Jewish minister or hazan in University in Baltimore in I887. At Johns Hopkins Adler was imbued America as a leadership figure symbolizing authoritative knowledge and with the new scientific ideal. While he never received a rabbinical wisdom. The professionalization of wisdom was underway, and to some ordination, he did lecture at the early Seminary on biblical archeology extent in reaction to the feminization of Jewish religious life. Rabbis and later became president of the first independent graduate school of increasingly pursued and received doctorates as well as seminary Jewish studies, the Dropsie College of Hebrew and Cognate Learning, certification. Charitable activity began to be carried out by university­ established in Philadelphia in I907. After Solomon Schechter's death in trained and credentialed specialists guided by new scientific methodolo­ I9I 5 Adler simultaneously held the presidencies of Dropsie College in gies. Morais' life's work, so closely identified with the synagogue and Philadelphia and the JTSA in New York City until his death in I940. foster home, caring for the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, and attending Adler invested his offices as president of institutions of higher Jewish to the education of children on a voluntary, unremunerated basis, was learning with the prestige traditionally associated with the activity of serving less and less as a male cultural ideal. Many of these responsibili­ rabbinical scholarship using the title of doctor conferred by the modern ties, which in traditional Jewish society belonged on an associational university. In so doing Adler invented a new and authoritative leadership basis to the male leadership of the community, were deemed "unmanly" role in American Jewish communal life. To put it slightly differently, as with increasing frequency even as Morais' mourners depicted him as a Ismar Schorsch has explained the professionalization of the western paragon of virtue for emulation.106 Euorpean rabbinate, "the doctorate became the emblem of the modern The biography of Cyrus Adler exemplifies the historical transition rabbi."I08 In Adler's case, the doctorate substituted for semihah (ordina­ from amateur communal leader to accredited "Scholar-Doer," as Jonathan tion), just as the doctor substituted for the rabbi as a new type of Jewish Sarna puts it, under the impact of scientism and professionalization. 107 communal leader. Adler, one of the founders of the American Jewish Historical Society, was Morais, by contrast, labored without the credentials of the western tutored early in life by Morais and went on to receive at the age of seminary rabbi, the training of the professional social worker, or the doctorate of a modern university graduate. He received a traditional Jewish education in Italy. His rabbinical ordination certificate, signed by 106. On professionalization during this time period and its impact on Jewish women's Haham Abraham Baruch Piperno, the respected chief rabbi of Livorno, philanthropy, see Bodek, 161-62; for general background, see Roy Lubove, The Profes­ sional Altruist: The Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880-1930 (Cambridge, attests that he completed a curriculum of biblical and Talmudic literature 1968); Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the with commentaries and was prepared to handle Jewish legal sources. In Development of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976); Bruce A. Kimball, The the bagitto, or Judeo-Livornese dialect, the title maskil on his ordination "True Professional Ideal" in America: A History (Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, 1992). certificate identified its bearer as ordained to teach but was inferior to the The professionalization of the medical profession, the marginalization and outlawing of title hakham, the highest rabbinical title used by Sephardic Jews to midwives, and the violent surgery practiced against women may be taken as just one 109 example of the effects of this process on the lives of women. See e.g., G. J. Barker-Benfield, designate someone empowered to render legal decisions. Morais "Sexual Surgery in Late-Nineteenth-Century America," Seizing Our Bodies: The Politics of lacked the imprimatur of the modern western theological seminary, Women's Health, ed. Claudia Dreifus (New York, 1978), 13-41. A similar point is made having never gone on to complete his training at the Rabbinical College by Bodek, 162, who uses the fate of the midwife in early modern Europe as an analogy tor of Padua, founded in I829, where the leading Italian Jewish scholars of the fate of the volunteer woman in America. his day, Isaac Reggio and Samuel David Luzzatto, taught. Morais was 107. Jonathan D. Sarna, "Cyrus Adler and the Development of American : The 'Scholar-Doer' as a Jewish Communal Leader," AJH 78 (March 1989): 382- 99; Robinson, "Invention"; Cyrus Adler, I Have Considered the Days (Philadelphia, 1941). Another exemplary contrast could be drawn between Morais and Bernard 108. Schorsch, "Emergence of the Modern Rabbinate," 243. Drachman, a professionally-trained and accredited rabbi, co-founder of the original JTSA, 109. For the Morais semihah (ordination) certificate, see SM Papers, Box 13, FF 38 whom Jeffrey Gurock has characterized as having moved during the same period "from (C}S), signed by Piperno, Abraham Curiat, Isaac Alveranga, and Angiolo Funaro. Moshe exception to role model," whereas Morais, as we have seen, went from being a "role model Davis has pointed out that this document was not a rabbinical ordination, but limited to to the exception." See Jeffrey Gurock, "From Exception to Role Model: Bernard authorizing its recipient to teach Jewish subjects (hat'arat hora'ah). See Davis, "Shabbtai Drachman and the Evolution of Jewish Religious Life in America, 1880-1920," AJH 76 Morais," 575, n. 6. On the Judeo-Livornese usage, see Vittorio Marchi, Lessico del (June 1987): 456-84. Livornese con Finestra Aperta sul Bagitto (Livorno, 1993),304. 188 AM E RIC A N JEW ISH HIS TOR Y

essentially an "amateur" in the language of both the seminary and the university. True, Morais was the first Jew to be granted an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Pennsylvania (in 1887, the same year Adler received his Ph.D.) in recognition of his outstanding achieve­ ments. But this degree, unlike Adler's, was not a "real" credential. It conferred on Morais a title (doctor) he neither sought nor used, but one by which the community was able to distinguish him from other uncredentialed "reverends." 110 It was Cyrus Adler, finally, who assiduously collected and carefully arranged Morais' personal papers at Dropsie College in anticipation of fulfilling, in Moshe Davis' words, a "dream, amidst his busy life, to pause for a brief moment and inscribe a poem in the form of a biography to his master." 111 As his former pupil and successor (after the death of Solomon Schechter) as president of the JTSA, Adler faithfully remem­ bered Morais with love and devotion. But Adler's professional life never left him time to pause, and so his hope of completing his master's biography went unfulfilled and the process of forgetting continued unchecked. Perhaps overlooked by feminist scholars as a man, undoubtedly dismissed by others as unimportant, Sabato Morais was an unusual exception whose Anglo-Livornese rabbinic humanist legacy challenges standard evaluations of nineteenth-century American Jewish religious leadership. Analogous to "women's" history, which for so long remained invisible, Morais' biography invites us to revise judgments about what is deemed historically significant, to analyze the role gender plays in the assessment of historical significance, and to reexamine the claims for inclusivity that accompany those historical assessments. The riddle of Morais' life and funeral raises the question and points the way toward reinterpreting the transformation of American at the end of the nineteenth century while posing broader questions about the politics of ethnic memory in the twentieth.

IIO. On the conferring of the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, see Secretary Jesse Y. Burk, University of Pennsylvania, to SM, May 3, 1887, SM Papers, Box 4, FF 4 (CJS); University of Pennsylvania One Hundred and Thirty-First Annual Commencement Programme, Wednesday June 8,1887,4. Morais was the first Jew to receive such a degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and according to , "in all probability, [Morais] was the second Jew in the United States so to be singled out .. . the first was Bernhard Felsenthal." See Jacob Rader Marcus, United States Jewry (Detroit, 1989), 3:124. Note, however, that the PJE, Nov. 19, 1897, 3; Morais, Jews of Philadelphia, 442; Davis, Emergence, 355 all claim Morais was the first to be so honored. Marcus does not provide a date for Felsenthal's degree. III. Moshe Davis, "Annotated Bibliography," 60.